Trish Stratus Looks Back On Gravy Bowl Match, Turning It Into a Memorable Moment

Trish Stratus was part of the infamous “gravy bowl match” on Smackdown in 2001, and she recently spoke about how she approached it. Stratus defended the WWE Women’s Championship against Stacy Keibler in the second iteration of the gross (in more ways that one) bout, which took place on November 22nd, 2021 and was emblematic of WWE’s approach to women’s wrestling during that era.

Stratus weighed in on the match as an example of the poor opportunities she had at that early stage in her career with Chris Van Vliet for Insight. She spoke about how they made a moment out of it to where it was part of the Raw opening video for years. You can see highlights below:

On Not Getting Great Opportunities In the Ring Early On:

“It was like making lemonade, right? I do remember that day we got there, and it was American Thanksgiving was coming up weirdly in November or whatever. Am I right, Canadians? So we had been doing some wrestling. We had got away from that other stuff, and we were excited about having the chance to do some more wrestling. Then I remember Fit’s like, ‘Ugh, you guys are gonna hate this, but you guys have a gravy bowl match, because it’s Thanksgiving, so you guys have a gravy bowl match.’ I’m like, oh, that’s adorable, but I was like, all right, well, if I want to have to be in a stupid gravy bowl match, I’m gonna jump off the ramp, get thrown off the ramp. That’s how I’m gonna start this match. So instead of ‘Puppy chants,’ it was ‘Holy sh*t’ chants. That was cool.”

On The Gravy Bowl Match Being In the Raw Opening For Years:

“Listen, wrestling is about these moments and making the most out of what you’re given. Even like you said, you were barely given time. Well that’s fine; you give us three minutes, gonna be the best damn three minutes you ever got. I think a lot of it is like sometimes we look back, I think Amy [Lita] and I have done this where we’re like that match is eight minutes but it’s so good. You can do stuff in eight minutes as long as you have the storytelling. I just think characters work really [well]; there’s a lot of character work, there’s a like more storytelling than I think today, and so those eight-minute matches could mean a lot more because they’ve got that behind it.”